Dhruva Mistry was born in Gujrat in 1957. He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda from 1974 to 81 before going on to study further at the Royal College of Art, London between 1981 and 83 on a British Council Scholarship. In the year 1984, he was an artist in residence at Kettle's Yard Gallery with a Fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge. Since then Mistry has exhibited extensively in United Kingdom, Europe and Japan.

Best known for his sculptures, Mistry combines religious art of ancient civilizations along with the popular art of the contemporary bazaar, steeping his works with influences from Egyptian to Cycladic art, traditions of European figurative sculpture and elements of Hinduism and Buddhism. His creations often have a rich narrative quality and at other times are highly conceptual, engaging with the process of art- making and thereby leading to an intellectual debate between the artist and viewer. Mistry's oeuvre spans media including drawing, painting, etching, dry point, digital works, photography and sculpture.

With Something Else, Mistry presents a tableau of stainless steel reliefs that reinterpret sculpturally the navrasas or the nine universal emotions. These compositions, characterized by cut-outs revealing silhouettes of female torsos in different postures and soaked in corresponding hues, evoke the spirit and beauty of the navrasas, while alluding to their profound significance in the fullness of existence.

The works, above all, explores the timeless concept of Maya or illusion. Revisiting with the doctrine after his stroke, Mistry employs the interplay between presence and absence, reality and imagination to manifest its essence. As he puts it, “Maya remains an engaging entity precisely because it is everything and 'nothing'. In the absence of it being 'anything' as such, I see it as 'something else' which nurtures my being.”

Mistry's public-art installations can be found at Goodwood, Sussex, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and the Hakone Open Air Museum, Japan. He was also commissioned to produce sculptures for the Victoria Square in Birmingham, U.K. and Tamano City, Japan.

Mistry's works are part of numerous prestigious collections including those at the Lalit Kala Akademi, the Tate Gallery, the Arts Council, the British Council, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, and the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan.

Mistry was elected into the Royal Academy of Arts in 1991, and in 1993 was invited to be a Fellow with the Royal Society of British Sculptors, London. He was appointed as Professor, Head of Sculpture and Dean of Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda, in 1997 upon his return to Baroda, a position he held until 2002.

He continues to live and work in Baroda.